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August 31, 1968 Catacombs Club, Houston, TX
The "First Annual Catacombs Pop Festival" was put together by Bob Cope, the Catacombs Club Manager. The Mothers of Invention, Country Joe and the Fish, Canned Heat, plus Houston bands Neal Ford and the Fanatics, Matchbox. The Moving Sidewalks were billed fourth for the show. "The day before, frustrated with Steve Ames, who was dragging his feet getting their "Flash" album released, they decided to go to California. Mitchell and Billy Gibbons concocted a scheme to make a late-night exit. They rented a U-Haul trailer, attached it to Gibbons' GTO and loaded it with equipment. They got to Tom Moore's house about two in the morning and knocked on his window. "Come on. We're going to California," they told him. Believing they were putting him on, Moore said, "Get out of here" and went back to bed. So Gibbons, Mitchell and Don Summers went to California, without Moore, which was kind of the birth of the Sidewalks as a three-piece band. The Sidewalks stayed in California for a couple of weeks, making their home in "a real dive" of a hotel off Sunset Boulevard, Mitchell said. The whole time they were there, Gibbons put on an English accent. "He was really good at it," Mitchell said. "He never broke character. He had everybody convinced that we were from England." The Sidewalks trio went to a couple of clubs on the Sunset Strip looking for a gig. At a club called the Galaxy, as Mitchell remembered it, the band practically forced their way in, played a couple of songs and got hired. They played there for a few nights, then played at a few other clubs, Mitchell recalled. Meanwhile, all was not well in Houston. Moore was taking the heat for his missing band mates. "We felt sorry for Tom," Summers said. "He had to field all the questions about where we were at show time." "By this time we were getting emergency phone calls from Bob Cope (manager of the Catacombs)," Mitchell said. "Some of us had probably called home and found out that the Ames agency, which was our manager, had actually gone nuclear. We'd missed the show. . . . They were really, really mad. They supposedly had people out looking for us. "At some point we decided we better go back home and face the music," Mitchell said. "We knew we were going to be in major trouble." They didn't make much money — maybe $50 a night — but the adventure was worth its weight in gold. "It was quite the experience," Mitchell said. "Some of the people we met out there are still friends with Billy." When they got back, "Tom was pretty mad, actually," Mitchell said. "But he got over it." Moore said there was one positive note: He got to see the Mothers of Invention. It wasn't too long after the trip to California that the Sidewalks began to break up, thanks to Uncle Sam, who decided he needed Moore and Summers more than the Sidewalks did. Moore was the first to go, leaving the band as a trio. Then Summers got his "Greetings" letter and the Sidewalks were no more.